Claire and Dom Hartley bought their Edwardian weatherboard on Kooyong Road, Armadale, in 2023 with a plan borrowed directly from a Sunday night renovation program: knock out the wall between the kitchen and the formal living room, install a four-metre island bench, and reveal it to extended family in one dramatic unveiling. They budgeted $85,000. They have so far spent $214,000 and the unveiling has not happened, because the wall turned out to be load-bearing and the house is currently held up by a steel beam that cost more than their first car.
The real trouble began in the planning, not the building. Six months of watching renovation shows together had given the Hartleys two completely different ideas of what "open-plan" meant. Dom wanted a single zone for cooking, eating and watching the football. Claire wanted what she called "broken-plan living," a term she picked up from a design account on Instagram, meaning the same open space but subtly divided by furniture so you can pretend you have rooms again. They did not discuss this difference until the wall was already gone.
What followed, according to a builder on Wattletree Road who has worked on the house since January, was four months of the Hartleys communicating primarily through a shared renovation app, leaving notes on tile samples rather than talking directly. The compromise they eventually reached was not about the kitchen at all. Rather than argue further about the open-plan zone, they agreed to each take their own ensuite off the new main bedroom, a change that added $38,000 to the build and was, by both their accounts, the easiest decision of the entire project.
Claire says the marriage is "honestly fine, we just needed proper zoning." Dom agrees, adding that he has not seen his wife before 7am in four months and considers this an improvement. The splashback, the original centrepiece of the plan, has not yet been chosen. A tile sample board has been sitting on the new island bench, untouched, since March.
The Hartleys still intend to invite family over once it's finished. Claire has not ruled out filming it.